Betting on Cricket Part 2

IPL TEAM RATINGS

We will run through the entire squad of each team in readiness for the games, so we'll do them in the order that they will play. This is always a good habit in case you run out of time before a season starts. If you only do the first few teams you can finish the rest while watching the opening couple of games.

We'll start each with the captain and then alphabetical order.

For the IPL we need to mark players that are international as this later becomes relevant as to whether they will take the field.

We should also put notes of some kind where the stats may be deceptive. Usually because a player has only played a few games, or only bowls occasionally. In fact players who bowl less than 3 balls a game will have their bowling stats left out, since they most likely won't be bowling anyway.

If you really don't have time, or patience, then it's fine to just do those players most likely to play, and then add any others as and when they get picked.

Summary

So let's summarise what we have put on the team stat sheets:

Batting:

Runs = Average rounded off

Balls = Runs / Strike rate as a decimal

Fielding:

Fielding = catches / matches

Bowling:

Runs / 4overs = Economy X 4

Wickets / 4 overs = (Runs / 4 overs) / average

To save space the team stat sheets are at the end of this article.

What do we do with the stats?

Once the toss is decided we make a short list of the playing 11. We then do our comparisons. We need a mechanical way to not only pick a winner, but also to give us a win %.

The reason it needs to be mechanical is that we should be able to run the numbers up after a game has been played to see how our system went. This is good because some days we just want to take a break, or go out when the game is on. It's also good to know if we would have won or lost without bias. Anytime somebody gives you tips in hindsight there is always a bias. Why do you think horse betting systems can all tell you about the 50 to 1 shot they had last week? It means nothing.

What we are aiming for is a set of definitive rules to be applied quickly. We have 30 minutes from the announcement of the starting XI to the start of the game. In this time we need to run the numbers, check the odds and make our bets. There should be no rush so we can minimise mistakes. It should also be simple enough we can chat with friends or watch tv while we do it.

Let's have a made up Chennai starting XI in runs order and check how our stats work.

Name

Runs

Balls

Fielding

Runs/4 overs

Wkts/4 Overs

MS Dhoni

35

27

2.5

S Raina

34

24

0.45

29

1.09

S Badrinth

30

26

0.21

M Vijay

27

21

0.37

D Bravo

25

20

0.42

33

1.28

R Jadeja

23

27

0.33

29

0.79

F du Plessis

22

19

0.29

28

1.79

D Bollinger

20

17

0.23

30

1.27

N Kulasekara

11

9

0.36

31

1.13

R Ashwin

9

10

0.21

26

1.26

S Randiv

8

10

0.38

29

1.31

TOTAL

244

210

5.75

We put them in runs order as a short hand way of getting a batting order. When we do a real game the batting order will be given and we'll use that order.

First we want a batting total for the 120 balls. We have several options here and we need to pick one.

a) We could just take the scores from the openers down until we get to 20 overs.

But this won't take into account the strength of the lower order.

b) We could average the whole team to get an average and then fit that into 20 overs.

But this won't give any weight to the top order who will bat more often.

c) We could do both a) and b) and average them out. This would give weight to the top order while still taking into account the lower order.

STEP 1

Take the total balls and divide it by 120.

210/120=1.75

Then divide the runs by this new number.

244/1.75=139

STEP 2

Start adding up balls until you get close to 120. In our case we reach 118 after Bravo. So we add up all the runs to Bravo and then add the remaining balls on as runs. In this case 2 to make up 120.

Runs up to Bravo +2 balls remaining = 151+2 = 153

STEP 3

Add them together and divide by 2 to get the teams offensive (batting) score:

139+153 = 292

292/2 = 146

For the bowling we will take a simple, in some ways, approach. We will assume 4 bowlers will bowl the full 4 overs and then have 2 others bowl out 2 each. We'll order the bowlers by runs/4ov to avoid an overly complicated system.

We can knock up a quick table of the best 6 bowlers by runs/4ov and then half the runs and wickets of the 5th and 6th bowlers to simulate them only having 2 overs.

Name

Runs

Wkts

R Ashwin

26

1.26

F du Plessis

28

1.79

S Randiv

29

1.31

R Jadeja

29

0.79

S Raina

15

0.55

D Bollinger

15

0.64

TOTAL

142

6.34

We get a defensive score of 6 for 142.

An easy comparison:

149 batting

6 for 142 bowling

But we haven't factored in the fielding yet.

We can simply compare the fielding scores and multiply the result by an arbitrary number. As the scores are going to be averaged out quite well, and we want the fielding to be important, but not the game breaker, we should base it on our Mumbai numbers. Since the only numbers we have are the Mumbai ones, we'll use them. Better to have only a few real numbers than an abundance of imaginary ones. The difference between batting and boling is 7. So we'll make the fielding about half that. 4 is a good number.

A quick scan of the Mumbai and Chennai team stats will give you the impresssion that the wicket stats are much closer than the fielding stats between players. With less variation we'll need a bigger multiplier to amplify their importance. Excuding wicket keepers the fielding stats seem to fall from about 0.2 to about 0.8. Wickets seem to fall between about 1.10 to 1.50. A large difference which is made larger by more player's fielding being added together than wickets. So I'll just go with double, since while I feel the wicket number ought to be triple or more, fielding is more important in my book. So that's a multiplier of 4 for fielding and a multiplier of 8 for wickets.

Just by the use of the phrase "between about" shows I'm being subjective. This means you don't need to take these numbers. Take a look yourself and set your own. You could even punch all the numbers into a spreadsheet and get the true spread. But I'll stick with just how it appears to me.

So who wins?

Let's grab some numbers out of the air for Mumbai just for calculations sake:

Okay, so we predict a Mumbai win. Not necessarily by 15.22 runs. The 15.22 is actually our index on how sure we are that they will win. If you want to then go ahead and bet $1522 on the event, you could, but better to use a proper staking strategy, and that's what we'll get to.

Chennai Super Kings

Previous champions so we can check our work by comparing other teams to this one. If Chennai come up as the weakest we may need to re-think our numbers.

Name

Runs

Balls

Fielding

Runs/4 overs

Wkts/4 Overs

MS Dhoni

35

27

2.5

S Anirudha

26

20

0.52

R Ashwin

9

10

0.21

26

1.26

S Badrinth

30

26

0.21

G Bailey

28

21

0.31

48

0

D Bollinger

20

17

0.23

30

1.27

D Bravo

25

20

0.42

33

1.28

F du Plessis

22

19

0.29

28

1.79

B Hilfenhaus

4

6

0.09

28

1.38

M Hussey

41

32

0.56

R Jadeja

23

27

0.33

29

0.79

S Jakati

14

11

0.38

29

1.15

J Sharma

13

10

0.3

31

1.19

S Randiv

8

10

0.38

29

1.31

N Kulasekara

11

9

0.36

31

1.13

Y Mahesh

9

9

0.29

30

1.43

A Morkel

28

20

0.22

32

1.19

A Mukund*

18

18

0.53

23

2.5

S Raina

34

24

0.45

29

1.09

W Saha

26

20

0.5

S Styris

26

19

0.26

30

1.09

S Tyagi

2

2

0.22

32

1.07

K Vasudevadas

15

12

0.79

G Vignesh**

18

15

0.4

24

1.55

M Vijay

27

21

0.37

TOTAL

Numbers in red are deceptive as they are from stats large enough to count, but small enough to be biased.

*A Mukund has only bowled 105 balls. Worth updating his stats as he will be bowling one would think.

**G Vignesh has only bowled 108 balls.

Mumbai Indians

Name

Runs

Balls

Fielding

Runs/4 overs

Wkts/4 Overs

H Singh

17

12

0.29

26

1.04

A Blizzard

21

18

0.41

Y Chahal

6

8

0.29

19.8

1.19

J Franklin

33

26

0.29

33

0.92

H Gibbs

26

21

0.48

D Jacobs

26

22

0.47

M Johnson

10

8

0.13

28

1.38

D Karthik

26

20

0.62

D Kulkarni

4

6

0.2

31.4

1.15

R Levi

31

21

0.36

C McKay

14

10

0.12

32

1.46

L Malinga

9

8

0.26

27

1.53

S Marathe**

45

31

0

A Nechim

9

9

0.04

30

1.17

P Ojha

5

5

0.22

27

1.43

M Patel

7

7

0.22

29

1.33

T Perera

12

10

0.39

30

1.33

R Peterson

18

16

0.16

28

1.08

K Pollard

29

18

0.54

31

1.4

A Rayudu

26

22

0.5

J Shah*

14

12

0.75

34

2.25

R Sharma

32

24

0.43

30

1.11

R Shukla*

0

0

0.25

29

1.83

A Singh*

18

14

0.43

24

0.8

RP Singh

5

6

0.36

30

1.26

T Suman

22

18

0.23

31

1.05

P Suyal*

0

37

0.57

A Tare

21

19

0.47

S Tendulker

40

32

0.38

32

0.51

A Wankhade

12

10

0.2

S Yadav

20

15

0.36

24.8

1.2

TOTAL

*Bowled less than 100 balls, so the stats can be used but are not reliable and should be updated every time the player plays.

** S Marathe has only batted 5 innings. We should update his stats each time he bats.

K Yadav and S Nayak have no first class records. For this reason they were left off the table altogether to save space. Should they take the field we will just have to ignore their stats and treat it as a 10 man team until we have some data. It does seem improbable though that with such a large squad these two will be chosen to play anyway.